#RomaFF14 | October 19, Bill Murray to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award conferred by Wes Anderson

The fourteenth Rome Film Fest will award Bill Murray the Lifetime Achievement Award on Saturday October 19^th, at 5:30 pm in Sala Sinopoli of the Auditorium Parco della Musica: the award will be conferred by Wes Anderson, the director who more than any other has helped to make him an icon of our contemporary age. Before the ceremony, Wes Anderson will engage in a dialogue with his fetish actor, in a Close Encounter during which the two friends will review the main phases in Murray’s multifaceted artistic career and the magic partnership that has bound them across their collaboration in a long series of films: from Rushmore to The Royal Tenenbaums, from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou to The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel and the more recent Isle of Dogs. After his dazzling debut in television, as a star of “Saturday Night Live”, it was cinema that consecrated Bill Murray, first in Ghostbusters by Ivan Reitman and later in a series of film that have become cult thanks, above all, to his acting: from Groundhog Day by Harold Ramis to Ed Wood by Tim Burton, from Broken Flowers by Jim Jarmusch to Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola, which won him the Golden Globe, the Bafta, and an Academy Award nomination.
The series of Close Encounters is enriched by the participation of two other remarkable protagonists of international cinema, Ron Howard and Kore-eda Hirokazu.
At 3:30 pm, Ron Howard will take the stage of Sala Sinopoli, to review with the audience the extraordinary career that has ranged across sixty years of cinema and television. In 1959 at the age of five, he made his debut as an actor in the cult series “The Twilight Zone”. In 1977, while still starring in “Happy Days” as Richie Cunningham, he made his debut as a filmmaker. His talent behind the camera led him to experiment with a range of very different genres and to direct many hit films: from Splash to Cocoon, from Far and Away to Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon and Cinderella Man, to the films adapted from the novels by Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Inferno) and the more recent Solo: A Star Wars Story. A Beautiful Mind won him the Academy Award in 2002. During the Encounter, Ron Howard will present his latest work, Pavarotti, a documentary on the life of the famous Italian tenor.
At 7:30 pm (Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna Sala SIAE) the spotlight will be on Kore-eda Hirokazu. The protagonist of one of the retrospectives of the fourteenth Rome Film Festival, the Japanese director, screenwriter and film editor is one of the most inspired and acclaimed auteurs in world cinema. His career spans thirty years, during which he has forged a highly personal idea of cinema, an intimate body of work that aims at a delicate, minimal style, focusing on themes involving man’s weakness, childhood, family relations and memory.
Six films from the Official Selection are on the slate:
The famous television series “Downton Abbey” becomes a film for the big screen, directed by Michael Engler; it will be screened at 7:30 pm in Sala Sinopoli. The film picks up and continues the story of the aristocratic Crawley family: we return to their sumptuous estate with the most famous guests that the Crawleys could ever hope to entertain, the sovereigns of the United Kingdom, King George V and Queen Mary. They bring with them a lady-in-waiting whose presence will prove distressing for the masters of the house. With a lavish party to prepare and a dinner to study down to the smallest detail, the servants in the Crawleys’ loyal staff will do everything in their power to guarantee the success of the event. The monarchs’ visit will bring scandal, romance and intrigue that puts the future of Downton Abbey at risk.
At 10:30 pm (Sala Sinopoli), the screening will feature Military Wives by Peter Cattaneo. The life of military wives on the front can be thankless. Separated from their husbands and staring down the barrel of anxiety and loneliness, their quiet bravery and sacrifice go unnoticed as they live with the dread of a fateful knock on the door. But Kate, an officer’s wife, bears it all with grace and stoicism. She finds freedom in song, and persuades a group of women on the base in the same situation to form the first Military Wives Choir.
At 8 pm, Sala Petrassi will be the venue for the screening of The Farewell by Lulu Wang. A common theme in many movies about lies and secrets within the family is the cathartic value of telling the truth. I wanted to play against this in The Farewell. I didn’t want the film to place judgement on any character or on the family’s decision to hide the truth from their matriarch. Nobody’s a bad guy in this family. To me, it’s really a story about ‘love languages,’ about how we express love in different ways culturally and individually and how that can create a lot of miscommunication in modern families, especially families that find themselves between cultures”.
At 10:30 pm, also in Sala Petrassi, the screening will feature Willow by Milcho Manchevski. “Love, trust and motherhood are issues that three families in our film – one medieval and two contemporary, must deal with – explains the director. The three women are faced with moral and personal dilemmas that end up redefining their roles in their communities. They have not set out to change the world or society, but their search for love, trust and motherhood makes them unlikely heroines. On the surface, the beliefs and lifestyles of our characters in the Middle Ages and in contemporary Macedonia could not be more different. Still, there is something in the essence of who we are that has not changed very much over time”.
At 5 pm, the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna Sala SIAE will feature the documentary film Mystify: Michael Hutchence by Richard Lowenstein: an intimate and insightful portrait of Michael Hutchence, the INXS frontman, a complex and sensitive man who with his extraordinary voice and reckless lifestyle, his charm and sensuality, enchanted audiences for an all-too-short time on
and off the stage. Michael struggled with the idea of success, the creative limits of pop stardom and how to express his integrity; a longing that shaped his life and music and gave birth to a desire to reach far beyond the constraints of pop. Until a traumatic event made him vulnerable, unable to move forward and defenceless against the onslaught of the tabloid press.
At 9:30 pm in the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna Sala SIAE, the screening will present 1982 by Oualid Mouaness. In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, already embroiled in a civil war. On the last day of school at a private school outside Beirut, eleven-year-old Wissam is determined to tell his classmate Joanna that he loves her. For a dreamy kid like Wissam, it’s hard to fathom the seriousness of what’s about to happen, while his teachers, on different sides of the political divide, try to mask their fears.
 The programme of Special Events will feature the screening of Illuminate – Laura Biagiotti by Maria Tilli (at 5:30 pm in Sala Petrassi). The documentary film tells the personal and professional story of one of the pioneers in global fashion, a woman who was able to get ahead in a hostile industry without ever sacrificing her tenderness and femininity. Actress Serena Rossi, a family friend of the Biagiottis, narrates the film together with Laura Biagiotti’s daughter Lavinia. Many notable arts figures provide their own perspectives: Carla Fracci, Santo Versace, Nancy Brilli, Massimiliano Rosolino, Silvana Giacobini, Romina Power, Vittorio Sgarbi, and Beppe Modenese.
The programme of the new “Duel” format will begin at 11 am at Palazzo Altemps with the “duel” between the artistic director of the Rome Film Fest Antonio Monda, and Francesco Chiamulera, who conceived and is responsible for the festival “A Mountain of Books”, featuring encounters with the author from Cortina and the Cortina d’Ampezzo award for literature. The theme of the challenge is Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder and All About Eve by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, two cult movies released in theatres in 1950: both offer a surprising point of view on the idea of the diva and the star system. In the same venue but at 12 noon, there will be an event from the “Loyalties/Betrayals” format: Gian Arturo Ferrari will present the film adaptation of “Shining”, one of Stephen King’s most famous novels. At the Macro at 6 pm, director and screenwriter Cristina Comencini and theatre and artistic director Piero Maccarinelli will be on stage for a debate titled Wilder/McDonagh. At 8 pm Lila Azam Zanganeh will comment on the movie adaptations of the Odyssey.
At 3 pm the Frecciarossa Cinema Hall will feature the screening of Conversation Piece, Luchino Visconti’s penultimate film, in the version restored by the CSC/Cineteca Nazionale. At the Auditorium of the MAXXI at 5 pm, the screening will present The Taming of the Shrew by Franco Zeffirelli, a tribute in memory of the filmmaker who recently passed away. The film is an adaptation of the play by Shakespeare, reinterpreted in a modern feminist perspective. In the same venue, at 7:30 pm, there will be a presentation of I Wish I Was Like You by Luca Onorati and Francesco Gargamelli (Riflessi): not just a documentary on the Nirvana concert that took place in Marino, in the province of Rome, on February 22^nd 1994, but a journey into the 1990s, explored by the two directors going back in time with the help of personal repertory material, filmed in VHS-C across the many evenings of madness they enjoyed as kids.
At 9:30 pm, also at the MAXXI, Japanese director, screenwriter and film editor Kore-eda Hirokazu will introduce the screening of Maborosi, one of the films in the retrospective dedicated to his work, the film that marked his debut behind the camera in 1995, presented in Competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
The Casa del Cinema will be the venue for the first three screenings of the Retrospective dedicated to German director Max Ophüls: Le Plaisir at 6 pm, Letter from an Unknown Woman at 8 pm, Caught at 10 pm.
The My Cityplex Savoy will feature the repeat screenings of films from the Official Selection (Antigone by Sophie Deraspe at 3 pm, Tantas Almas by Nicolas Rincon Gille at 5:30 pm, Pavarotti by Ron Howard at 8 pm) and of Bar Giuseppe by Giulio Base (at 10:30 pm), a film from the “Riflessi” section.
The Teatro Palladium, the historic Roman movie theatre now owned by the Università Roma Tre, starting today October 19^th, will host a series of screenings from the line-up of the fourteenth Rome Film Fest: at 8:30 pm the programme features a repeat screening of That Click by Luca Severi.
The repeat screenings in the programme include: in the Frecciaross Cinema Hall, the screenings of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (at 5:30 pm), Downton Abbey (at 8 pm) and Military Wives (at 10:30 pm). The MAXXI will hold a screening of Antigone (3 pm).